BAY AREA UNDERWATER EXPLORERS
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Mission Statement
Bay Area Underwater Explorers is dedicated to exploration and mapping of our of marine environments; documentation of flora and fauna therein; diver training, education, and safety; and conservation of our underwater resources.
About This Cause
BAUE is a local affiliate of Global Underwater Explorers (GUE), an organization dedicated to promoting education, conservation and research of the underwater world. Locally within BAUE, we regularly conduct underwater projects in the greater Bay Area, from the Big Sur coastline up to the rugged areas off of the north coast. Some of the recent projects that we have conducted include exploring areas of a seamount off of Point Sur, producing high-resolution survey of underwater reefs, conducting marine-life surveys of nudibranch species, building one of the most comprehensive online species identification guides, surveying a WWII-era amphibious landing vehicle wreck as well as collaborating with NOAA to document the reefs and marine life of Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Please read more about these recent projects below and help support our efforts to better explore, document, and contribute to research and conservation efforts. Exploration and Documentation of Hoyo Negro The Hoyo Negro cave system is a submerged late Pleistocene cave site located in Quintana Roo, Mexico that was flooded about 10,000 years ago. The site has been the object of underwater exploration since 2007. Initial activity mapped the cave’s passageways and vast chamber (200 ft in diameter, and from 20 feet to 190 feet below sea level at the bottom). The seemingly bottomless chamber was named the Black Hole or Hoyo Negro. On the floor and walls of Hoyo Negro, divers discovered the well-preserved remains of many animals from the Late Pleistocene period, most of which are now extinct. Three giant sloths, including one previously unknown to science, two gomphotheres, two saber toothed cats, five possible extinct relatives of today’s spectacle bears, pumas, peccaries, and many other animals entered this chamber when the tunnels leading into the pit were mostly dry. In 2007, the team discovered a set of pristine human remains, a young girl between 15 and 16 years old they named Princess Naia. Using radiometric dating, scientists established the age of her skeleton as between 12,000 and 13,000 years ago. It is one of the most complete and well-preserved human skeletons of this age ever found in North America. By extracting DNA from one of her molars they determined that she fits in the lineage of Asian descent found only in the Americas. The team has also created a 3D model of her skeleton. This ongoing project will continue to catalog the animal remains at the site, extend the map of the pit and the tunnels leading into it, build a photo mosaic and detailed map of the floor of the cave, create a 3D model of the pit, and collect high quality panoramas of the site. Big Sur Bank Exploration Big Sur Bank is a unique offshore reef system located 3 miles out from Big Sur Point, California, originally explored by a group of scientists from 1988-1991. Details about their initial expeditions can be found at Cordell Expeditions. Based on the descriptions of what they saw and data available from MBARI, BAUE decided to embark on an exploration and research project to learn more about this site. The goals of the project were to explore the bank to better understand the topology and geography of the area and gather photo and video documentation of this natural resource to better inform the resource management and scientific communities. Underwater Mapping of Point Lobos Point Lobos State Reserve is an important local underwater resource and we have focused considerable efforts working to document and dive this area. We have run several efforts over the years to survey Point Lobos starting in 2002 combining nascent underwater sonar surveys with cave survey technique. Later, we incorporated higher-resolution underwater bathymetry into navigable online underwater maps published on our website for the broader community and supplemented these with a 2 meter resolution manual survey of 94,000 square feet of the shallow areas of the reef not covered by sonar bathymetry. In 2011, BAUE members spearheaded an effort to organize and fund further sonar bathymetry surveys of the remainder of the unsurveyed shallow areas in order to complete the survey coverage. In 2014, BAUE members produced a 4'x4' cement model of the surveyed areas encompassing Whaler's cove and worked with California State Parks to install it as an educational display for all Park visitors. Learn more about our various efforts documenting Point Lobos here: http://www.baue.org/projects/middle_reef/ http://www.baue.org/lobos_maps/ http://www.baue.org/projects/lobos_model/PointLobosMagazine_Winter13.pdf Nudibranch Surveys The BAUE Point Lobos Nudibranch Survey is an ongoing effort to quantify opisthobranch Mollusca populations inside the diving areas at Point Lobos State Reserve. Four transects have been established on the Middle Reef in Whaler's Cove where a representative set of opisthobranch species are surveyed periodically. Further, study participants are recording all species of opisthobranchs seen on dives in the park in order to build a comprehensive list of all species present inside the park. Over the course of 7 years of surveying, our team has identified potentially interesting trends in nudibranch populations that may correlate with larger-scale weather pattern fluctuations. In 2008, project members discovered a new species of nudibranch and worked with scientists from the California Academy of Sciences to document, collect and describe this new species. In addition, project members have documented a number of range extensions of other species into the greater Monterey and Carmel area. Learn more about the nudibranch efforts here: http://www.baue.org/projects/nudibranch/index.php Field Guide The Field Guide is a section of our website that offers ongoing photographic documentation of the marine life of Central California that SCUBA divers in this region are likely to encounter. Included in this section are pictures of several hundred species of plants and animals. Nearly all of the pictures were taken in the Big Sur, Carmel and Monterey areas. A few were taken elsewhere but all of the species in the gallery have been seen by BAUE members in Central California. Several thousand visitors a year view the Field Guide. It is one of the most extensive publicly available collections of photo documentation for underwater species in the area. Visit the field guide here: http://www.baue.org/projects/fieldguide/fieldguide.php Amtracks Survey In 2012, BAUE conducted a project at the Mating Amtracks, a well-known local dive site in Monterey Bay, where two WWII-era amphibious tracked vehicles sit, one on top of the other. The project consisted of several months of planning, including a reconnaissance dive, a project meeting, two project practice days, one day of setup dives, and two days of survey and documentation dives. Participants contributed in a variety of ways, including planning, research, surface management, diving, and data processing. This project combined members' archeology survey skills from earlier training through the Nautical Archeology Society with photo and video documentation to produce a 2-dimensional site survey used to research the history of these wrecks. Learn more about the Amtracks project here: http://www.baue.org/projects/amtracks/index.php Cordell Bank Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary is a plateau located approximately 20 miles offshore of Bodega Bay. Cordell Bank rises up from thousands of feet to a depth of roughly 300 feet. Many shallower pinnacles lie atop of the bank. The tops of shallowest pinnacles are about 120 feet below the surface. In addition to the dramatic topography, the bank is fabled to have amazing biodiversity, which led to its protection as a National Marine Sanctuary. In 2013, BAUE worked with NOAA to put a team of our divers on the bank to better explore and document the area. This area is extremely remote and BAUE expedition was only the fourth conducted to the area. Utilizing our experience in mixed-gas technical diving and photo and video documentation, we were able to capture documentation to support the Sanctuary's research, resource management and public outreach goals. Learn more about the Cordell Bank project and see the project video here: http://www.baue.org/projects/cordell/index.php